Although the Northern Territory government has been found to have misled the public with two inaccurate advertising campaigns paid for with taxpayers' dollars, the chief minister is adamant he will not apologise.
An auditor-general's report tabled in parliament on Wednesday night found that on two occasions the government violated the Public Information Act.
By Thursday the government had taken down the home page for its On Track cross-media campaign to promote the achievements of the public sector, which Auditor-General Julie Crisp found promoted party politics in contravention of the act.
The government was also found to have made "misleading and factually inaccurate" statements in two full-page ads taken out in the NT News last February, listing all opposition MPs by name and party and accusing them of blocking legislation to give police more powers to detain suspected traffickers of the drug ice.
In fact, Labor and independents sought to apply the usual consideration period to the legislation rather than ramming it through, and the laws have since been passed unopposed.
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But Chief Minister Adam Giles refused to apologise for the ads.
"We're not sorry for pointing out that Labor and independents blocked ice legislation," he told ABC radio.
"We shouldn't have put the party political preference of who they were, whether they were independent or Labor, so we'll put that apology out there, but we won't apologise for the ad itself."
Independent Gerry Wood was disappointed by the chief minister's refusal to apologise for the misleading ads.
"It was simply a lie and that doesn't concern him, and that's a worry to have coming from a chief minister who you would expect to lead," he told AAP.
The government should repay the $428,000 spent on the On Track ads and up to $16,000 spent on the two ice ads, said opposition spokeswoman Nicole Manison.
"It is disgraceful that Territorians have paid for those adverts; it just goes to show what type of chief minister we have if from his own office he's willing to sign off and still stand by adverts that are blatantly not true, misleading, inaccurate, and politically driven," she said.
Next month parliament will debate a motion to refer the ice ads to the privileges committee to determine whether Mr Giles or someone else was responsible for their publication, and whether their creation was in contempt of the Legislative Assembly.
